St.benedict

Gregorian chant

In the course of the Middle Ages, with the revival of Christian religious rites and ceremonies, there was an increase in interest towards music on the part of the Church. The increase in the repertoire of holy chants was enriched and contributed to by the Benedictine Gregory the Great, later Pope Gregory. He promoted the creation of the Antiphonary, a large collection of sacred Christian songs in Latin, chosen by the Church of Rome to be employed during religious functions. These chants became known as Gregorian, after the name Gregory, a term which includes the production of music dating from the first years of the spread of Christianity, to around the year 1000. The Gregorian chants spread widely across Europe, thanks to thework carried out in the monasteries, abbeys and convents (particularly of the Benedictine order), where the chants were copied out by hand and preserved. The chants gradually became altered over the course of time, until they were taken back to their original state by the work of the Benedictines of the Abbey of Solesmes, based on rigorous philological checks, and underwent important restoration with the Reform of sacred music ordered by Pope X in 1903. Today the Gregorian chant, recognised by the Church as “the true song of the Christian liturgy”, is available in the 1979 edition of the Graduale Triplex, a musical representation in square notation that resulted from the study conducted by the monks of Solesmes on the ancient musical codes present in the major European Benedictine abbeys.